soarce

Have you heard the news about event-driven architecture (EDA)? Maybe not, because there doesn't seem to be much news about EDA. But wait...there just might be more and more as "event-driven" businesses will need this notion to stay competitive. Joe McKendrick wrote about this area and mentioned John Bates, who in the article, is considered the father of event-driven processing. Remember this: that data is always on the move. Joe wrote that certain businesses are concerned with data on the move. Two in particular are the airlines and financial trading.

I entered this article because I can't help but put commodity futures trading and EDA together. The way I see the situation is that a commodity futures trading business would benefit from EDA. Let's go back to last fall when the corn market took off to new highs. Frankly it was events that shaped that market. One "event ", a major one,  was ethanol. The need for more corn when the supply was at an historic low. Granted the ethanol news doesn't have the "hot off the wire" persona that it did back in November and December of 2006, and the ethanol frenzy has cooled down some, but there is bound to be more events to plug into an event-driven system to gain a benefit. One recently was the British/Iran situation and the oil market. 

Joe's article is very good. He really went to task and delivered a story that gives EDA a fair shake.  He quoted Todd Biske who challenged event-driven businesses to think of themselves in the context of an event-driven business. These businesses must be in a position to realize the value of events. These businesses also need to think of the SOA side. Afterall a commodity futures broker must give service to the customer after an event has taken place, such as a crop or weather report.   

One item that's worth noting is risk. EDA and SOA have to be correctly balanced. Don't create too many event-driven applications without some type of filter to sift through the events to priortize them. In other words, don't over-leverage. Joe was right when he said EDA will evolve in its own right.

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